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Friday, August 31, 2007

Actually what happened was Rich Tehrani, President and Editor-in-Chief of TMCnet, interviewed Dr. Christian Stredicke, founder and CEO of snom technology AG. They talk about the evolution of VoIP, SIP protocols, and Snom's communications future. You can read it on TMCnet.Talking about future of communication the Internet Telephony Conference & Expo will be held at Los Angeles Convention Center September 10th to 12th, where you can enhance your knowledge in telephooy, VoIP, Unified Communications and a whole lot more in communications arena. I am registered and ready to go!. Too bad they don't tell you how to write better! Otherwise I could write like the TMCnet's gang! Rich TehraniTom KeatingGreg GalitzineRussell Shaw

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Don't expect to find Avaya or Nortel here, it is only Cisco and Mitel leading the market and in turn by chased by 3Com, ShoreTel, and Inter-Tel (also part of Mitel now). Also I did not see the number of devices based on OSS products like Asterisk information. Perhaps they were too open to be called pure IP PBXs. (I have not seen the report and my rumblings are pure guesses from the information provided)Basically The iLocus report will give you the following information on;Total IPPBX end user licenses shipped (and revenue) worldwide with regional breakdownIP PBX end user license shipment market share of different vendors worldwideIP PBX end user license shipment market share of non-Cisco vendorsIP PBX end user license shipment market share of different vendors in North AmericaIP PBX end user license shipment market share of different vendors in Asia PacIP PBX end user license shipment market share of different vendors in EMEAVendor Updates.Now I have to go and find how many Asterisk IP PBX or all their incarnations were shipped during the same period.

Earthlink Chief Executive Rolla Huff told Newsom during a telephone call "they were not going to be able to fulfill their end of the bargain," said Ballard. "Mr. Huff made it clear it wasn't going to happen with Earthlink; they are getting out of the Wi-Fi business."

Earthlink and Google Inc. beat out five other contractors who bid last year on the contract to create a citywide wireless network here. Like Philadelphia, Chicago and several other cities, San Francisco has been competing to become the first large U.S. city to make the Internet available throughout its borders.

Under the four-year agreement, which was never finalized due to a political tug-of-war between the mayor and the governing Board of Supervisors, Earthlink was supposed to bear the estimated $14-to-$17-million cost of building and maintaining the Wi-Fi system.

Despite Earthlink Inc.'s decision to bow out of its deal to help provide free wireless Internet access throughout San Francisco, the mayor here remains committed to the idea.

"We are still committed to free Wi-Fi, and we are going to get it done — quickly," said Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom. "We are disappointed, but we will not lose momentum here."

Nokia N95 (U.S. HSDPA Version and 8GB Version): Two new versions of Nokia's high-end N95 phone were also unveiled. The new U.S.-optimized version of the N95 is compatible with AT&T's high-speed, 3G HSDPA network, which translates into faster browsing and download speeds when uploading or downloading video or surfing the Net (the current N95 is only compatible with the slower EDGE network). It's also got a longer battery life and twice the internal operational RAM, which means programs will run more smoothly and load up faster (also a sometime problem on the current N95). Also announced, the 8GB N95, which has a bigger screen (about 2-centimeters bigger) than the current model and a scratch-free lens (versus the lens cap that opens easily on the current model). The body is all black, glossy plastic, versus the metal on the current model. It also has assisted-GPS, which means that the mapping software should work a little faster since it'll be getting some help from the cell phone network. Both new iterations of the N95 will be available in unlocked form on Nokia's Web site by the end of the year.Get more info on other models released yesterday at Switched.

The latest versions of Skype for both Windows and Mac include a key new business feature that many customers have been asking for. You can now transfer Skype calls simply and easily to other Skype contacts. Plus, if you’re a Skype Pro subscriber, you can transfer the call to a landline or mobile phone too.See the Call Transfer User Guide for more information on how to transfer Skype calls.

The purchase might help Microsoft compete with rivals IBM and Cisco in the red-hot unified communications market.With billions of dollars at stake in the market for unified communications, Microsoft on Aug. 29 agreed to acquire enterprise group chat software maker Parlano for an undisclosed sum.

In 2000, Parlano launched group chat technology that enables people to carry on topic-specific, multiparty instant messaging discussions that persist over time. Companies in several industries use MindAlign to conduct such conversations.Parlano and Microsoft were hardly strangers before the acquisition. Parlano created its technology architecture from the ground up to integrate with Microsoft's unified communications offerings. The software integrates with Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and Office Communications Server 2007, making it a seamless acquisition from a technology standpoint.

MindAlign also runs on Office Live Communications Server 2005, the previous version of Office Communications Server 2007. Microsoft dropped the "Live" part of the name last year and recast the software as a hub through which enterprises can run various forms of communications, including VOIP, enterprise instant-messaging, interactive voice response systems and video conferencing.

News ReleaseREDMOND, Wash. — Aug. 30, 2007 — TodayMicrosoft Corp. announced it has agreed to acquire Chicago-based Parlano, maker of MindAlign, a leading application for enterprise group chat. Microsoft expects to add Parlano’s group chat functionality as a new feature of Microsoft® Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office Communicator, Microsoft’s server and client software for presence, instant messaging, conferencing and VoIP.

“Parlano has been successful in meeting the rigorous communications needs of companies in financial services and other vertical markets,” said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft. “Parlano’s expertise and technology, added to Microsoft’s unified communications offering, will deliver customers the most complete presence, instant messaging and group chat solution on the market.”

Founded in 2000, Parlano offers group chat technology that enables people to carry on topic-specific, multiparty instant messaging discussions that persist over time. Parlano’s software is used by companies in a variety of industries, including financial services, call centers and technology, to conduct ongoing business-critical conversations.

“Parlano has helped many organizations enhance operations, improve service delivery and increase sales through more effective ongoing group communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing,” said Nick Fera, chairman and chief executive officer of Parlano. “The resulting competitive advantage will be further enhanced as we bring Parlano technology together with Microsoft Office Communications Server and Office Communicator.”

Because Microsoft’s unified communications technologies are based on standards and open protocols, Parlano has been able to create its technology architecture from the ground up to integrate with Microsoft’s unified communications offerings. Currently, Parlano’s MindAlign application integrates with Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and Office Communications Server 2007.

After the deal closes, Microsoft will add the group chat functionality to Office Communications Server and Office Communicator, and plans to offer group chat as part of the standard client access license for Office Communications Server 2007 Software Assurance customers. Current Parlano customers, many of whom already use Microsoft unified communications software, will have increased access to the breadth of Microsoft unified communications software.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not announced. The deal is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2007. Following the closing of the acquisition, members of the Parlano team are expected to join the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus. Parlano is a privately held company and was represented by Revolution Partners and Bell, Boyd & Lloyd LLP.

I was at the VoiceCon San Francisco 2007 and had the chance of seeing the demonstration of the VoIP-to-data attack presentation. This demo was also done at the BlackHat 2007. The demo Sachin Joglekar, Vulnerability Research Lead, shows how by sending a specific SIP packet, he can crash the SIP softphone and have it execute a server code to which he can connect via netcat. This process leads to a terminal (or Command Prompt) on the Windows system and he was in control of the target system. I guess at this point there is no need to explain further.I think it is good to see the demo podcast presented by Dan York of the “Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast”.So follow the links and enjoy the Blog and the podcast!

BEDFORD, Mass. - Empirix® Inc., which helps organizations adopt complex communications solutions with confidence, today announced that its Hammer® Test Portfolio is compliant with key IP communications solutions from Avaya (NYSE: AV), a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services. The Hammer Test Portfolio has been specifically designed to speed the development and validation of IP-based components and systems, reducing time to market for network equipment manufacturers and service providers. It provides a powerful combination of highly configurable signaling and comprehensive media capabilities, making it ideal for testing the performance and interoperability of a broad range of devices and services.

The Hammer Test Portfolio’s compatibility with Avaya IP telephony solutions provides Avaya customers with a cost-effective, integrated approach for ensuring a successful network implementation. By offering a broad range of application test coverage across both SIP and H.323, Hammer confirms the scalability, reliability and quality of Avaya’s platform and enables rapid deployment.

Empirix is a member of the Avaya Developer Connection Program – an initiative to develop, market and sell innovative third-party products that interoperate with Avaya technology and extend the value of a company’s investment in its network

As a member of the program, the company is eligible to submit products for compatibility testing by the Avaya Solution Interoperability and Test Lab in Lincroft, N.J. There, a team of Avaya engineers develops a comprehensive test plan for each application to verify whether it is Avaya compliant. Doing so ensures businesses can confidently add best-in-class capabilities to their network without having to replace their existing infrastructure—speeding deployment of new applications and reducing both network complexity and implementation costs.

"By offering compliance testing to the many innovative companies like Empirix that are members of our Developer Connection program, Avaya promotes fully interoperable solutions that help businesses unleash powerful new possibilities,” said Eric Rossman, vice president, developer relations and technical alliances, Avaya. “Businesses are able to use Intelligent Communications to connect employees and customers to information from wherever they are, over whatever device they have available – getting more out of their multivendor network and delivering new value to their bottom line."

"Being a part of Avaya’s Developer Connection Program allows us to offer a more effective solution to both Avaya and Empirix customers," said Duane Sword, vice president of product management at Empirix. "We share a dedication to enabling businesses to adopt IP telephony applications, contact centers and managed services with confidence."

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., Aug. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- As the VoIP market continues to grow, Verizon Business is responding by introducing several new features in September designed to increase functionality and add choice for its SIP Gateway VoIP customers. SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol, is an Internet- based signaling protocol used for creating, modifying and terminating sessions between two or more users on the Internet.

Among the most sought-after features is Foreign Telephone Number Assignment (FTNA), the ability to assign a U.S. telephone number outside the normal local calling area for that number. For example, a resident of Dallas could be assigned a Chicago-area telephone number, allowing friends and family in the Chicago area to place a local call. This feature also gives businesses the flexibility of maintaining local numbers for their customers while controlling costs by centrally locating all or portions of their business elsewhere.

"Since we successfully launched our wholesale VoIP product suite two years ago, we have continued to seek -- and find -- effective ways to fulfill the needs of our customers," said Jim Tyrrell, vice president of voice product management for Verizon. "Performance, reliability and a competitive cost structure are table stakes in this market. Our intent is to reach beyond those basics to offer an exceptional product with superior features."

Among these latest enhancements are several features that will allow wholesale customers to pick and choose specific functions that, in turn, let them customize offerings for their subscribers. For example, wholesale customers will have the ability to order two-way telephone numbers associated with SIP Gateway Service with or without E911 service. Many wholesale companies rely on multiple VoIP providers, so they prefer the savings and efficiency associated with unbundled 911.

Wholesale customers also will have the option of selecting metered or unmetered pricing for SIP Gateway Service Inbound Complete, providing the flexibility to choose the pricing model that best fits their customer base.

The new Discretionary Call Blocking feature will give wholesale customers the ability to designate blocking of eight specific types of calls (such as international long-distance) at the time the order is placed. Verizon Business then integrates the selected blocking into its network switch, thus freeing the wholesale customer from managing the blocking function.

Another popular feature to be offered is seasonal pricing, which allows a wholesale customer to keep a telephone number but temporarily suspend the ability to make or receive calls, except 911. This feature is especially attractive to wholesale subscribers who have multiple homes or who travel extensively.

Also included in the new functionalities is a more robust fraud detection and treatment capability. With this capability, Verizon Business can improve detection of fraudulent VoIP traffic, alert the wholesale customer, then temporarily or permanently block the suspected traffic based on the wholesale customer's direction.

On Aug. 20, Verizon Business also announced new enhancements to its ordering process for SIP Gateway VoIP customers. Wholesale products are sold by Verizon Partner Solutions and Verizon Business International Partner Solutions.

An eavesdropping vulnerability was revealed on the popularFull Disclosure mailing list on Wednesday. Vulnerabilityresearchers Humberto Abdelnur, Radu State and Olivier Festorclaimed the exploit could allow a remote attacker to turn aVoIP phone into an eavesdropping device, citing a GrandstreamSIP phone as an example.

While playing with the SIP Madynes stateful fuzzerfor a description see http://hal.inria.fr/inria-00166947/en),we have realized that some SIP stack engines have seriousbugs allowing to an attacker to automatically make a remotephone accept the call without ringing and without asking theuser to take the phone from the hook, such that the attackermight be able to listen to all conversations that take placein the remote room without being noticed.One example that wecan disclose (vendor was notified on 10 th May 2007) is thefollowing: Grandstream SIP Phone GXV-3000

Impact :A malicious user can remotely eavesdrop (a remote location)and perform DOS on a remote phone.ResolutionFixed software will be available from the vendor and customersfollowing recommended best practices (ie segregating VOIPtraffic from data) will be protected from malicious trafficin most situations.

The vulnerability is based in a sequence of two messages,where both messages are syntactically right, but togetherthey turn the device in an inconsistent state, where theRTP is now send to the attacker/

ougui at 152.81.48.94:5060 is the attacker1005 at 152.81.48.88:5060 the attacked phone

The door (OVI means Door in Finnish) to Nokia’s Internet services Music, games and maps among the first Ovi services.Nokia today introduced Ovi, the company’s new Internet services brand name. With the introduction of Ovi, Nokia is expanding from a focus on mobile devices to offering a range of Internet services. Ovi, meaning ‘door’ in Finnish, enables consumers to easily access their existing social network, communities and content, as well as acting as a gateway to Nokia services.As part of Ovi, Nokia announced the Nokia Music Store and N-Gage, two services that make it easy for people to discover, try and buy music and games from a blockbuster range of artists and publishers, including exclusive content only available through Nokia. Also under the Ovi umbrella is Nokia Maps, a navigation service that offers maps, city guides and more directly to compatible mobile devices. Nokia aims to bring more Internet based services to Ovi in the coming months.Speaking at the Nokia Go Play event in London, Nokia President and Chief Executive Officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo presented Ovi and the new Nokia services for consumers, and spoke about the company’s future plans as an Internet company: “The industry is converging towards Internet driven experiences and Ovi represents Nokia’s vision in combining the Internet and mobility. Nokia is the number one mobile device company in the world. Looking into the future, we will deliver great devices, combined with compelling experiences and services, to make it easy for people to unlock the potential of the Internet.” “We started this journey with our navigation services earlier this year and we are now combining all our services into a single branded offering – Ovi by Nokia. Over the coming 12 months, you will see us integrate new user interface elements, service suites and web communities to Ovi,” added Kallasvuo.Ovi – one key opens every door.Ovi (http://www.ovi.com) is the gateway to Nokia’s Internet services, including the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and N-Gage games. It will also be an open door to web communities, enabling people to access their content, communities and contacts from a single place, either directly from a compatible Nokia device or from a PC. The first version of Ovi.com is scheduled to go live in English during the fourth quarter of 2007 and additional features and languages expected to go live during the first half of 2008.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) has announced that Food Lion LLC, a member of Brussels-based Delhaize Group (NYSE:DEG), has selected AT&T to assist Food Lion in migrating from its legacy voice system to a new Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony system.

The project includes a phased migration of 1,500 users from Food Lion's existing Private Branch Exchange (PBX) telephone infrastructure to a managed VoIP solution. Food Lion will work with AT&T's Integration Solutions team to manage upgrades to many of its telephony related applications for the new VoIP solution. These upgrades include conversions of auto attendants, outbound dialers, recording systems and contact center applications, as well as installation of a unified messaging solution. The new VoIP system will serve as the foundation for future plans to deploy a full suite of IP-based collaboration tools. Food Lion is now better positioned to leverage a converged voice, video and data environment, which will lead to increased productivity and superior network alignment with its Brussels-based parent corporation.

Food Lion, a leading U.S. grocer with 1,300 supermarkets across 11 Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states, seeks to maintain low prices and quality assurance through technological advances and operating efficiencies.

With AT&T, Food Lion can further consolidate its telephony equipment suppliers and will have 24 hour service from AT&T's Integration Solutions team, which will handle installation issues and maintain the new hardware. AT&T's deployment services are helping to facilitate Food Lion's current headquarters expansion in Salisbury through upgrades to the company's communications services. AT&T's services will also enable the company to leverage today's hardware investment and take advantage of advanced AT&T telephony services in the future, such as video conferencing and wireless mobility.

OMAHA, Neb., Aug. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- KeyOn Communications Holdings, Inc. , a leading provider of wireless broadband data and Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) services and satellite video in small to midsized and rural markets, announced the further expansion of its Digital Voice VoIP product. KeyOn Communications has been testing voice services in select markets and based on positive reception from its subscribers, the Company has widened its roll-out of Digital Voice to include additional areas in its 11 state footprint. In this phase, KeyOn will be demonstrating additional VoIP capabilities including the testing of new devices, such as video phones and "soft" phones, across the expanded areas of operations.

Jason Lazar, Vice President, Corporate Development of KeyOn Communications, said, "As a result of customer demand, we have decided to deliver voice services to more of the communities we serve. Digital Voice is a perfect complement to our broadband data and satellite video services. We expect to offer voice as a bundled product throughout our network when we complete the full launch of the service."

Competitive advantage will come from harnessing the power of VoIP and SOA to evolve existing applications into rich Enterprise 2.0 Web services that enhance collaboration, employee productivity and the customer experience. This session will show how AJAX developers can use WSDLs to embed granular telephony functionality into their business applications, processes, Web services, and wikis – independent of the existing telephony infrastructure and without CTI expertise. Attendees will see basic programming techniques, gain insight into best practices from businesses with full-scale implementations, and learn how developers have been able to create working prototypes within hours to speed management approval.

Speaker Bio: LignUp’s founder, president and COO, brings 10+ years VoIP experience. As founder/CTO of SkyWave, Kevin pioneered deployment of VoIP technologies, established the first operational VoIP network in Japan, and developed the first real-time VoIP billing engine. Kevin led creation of the VoIP Forum of Japan and is a board director.

Time Warner Cable has started to deploy a VoIP plan in certain markets called "Digital OnePrice", a flat-rate pricing plan for its customers. The service offers 3,000 minutes per month of international calling to 100 countries for $19.95 more a month if you bundle the plan with TV, broadband and VoIP service, TWC's triple play.

Q:What countries are included in the International OnePrice calling plan?A:More than 100 countries are included in the International OnePrice calling plan. For a complete list of countries click here.

Q:Can I make calls to cell phones via the International OnePrice calling plan?A:Calls to cell phones in Anguilla, Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Macau, Paraguay, St. Kitts, Thailand and Trinidad and Tabago are included. Calls to cell phones in all other countries will be charged at a per-minute rate.

The plan was launched this week in San Antonio and New York, but should make its way to other markets shortly, according to a Time Warner Cable spokesman.

Monday, August 27, 2007

The kid who hacked (VOIP IP Telephony: iPhone unlocked) the iPhone so that it could be used with other carriers have had a rough ride with all the attention and his quest to get his phone sold on Ebay, is about to get one of the smoothest rides, soon."Once the offers went above like $10,000, $20,000 I knew they were bogus," said Hotz, of Glen Rock. "There's no way anyone would pay millions for this phone."

But high-tech mogul Terry Daidone offered a legitimate deal for the unlocked iPhone that Hotz couldn't pass up: a new Nissan 350Z roadster and three, new 8GB iPhones.

Daidone, founder of CertiCell, a company that refurbishes old cell phones, called Hotz yesterday with an offer to trade the $30,000 wheels for the historic cell phone.

"It's the car the bad guy in the movie 'Fast and Furious 3' drives," said Hotz, who jumped at the offer. "It's brand new. We're going to go to the dealership and pick it up in a couple of days."

Nokia's N-Gage will run on several of Nokia's N-series handsets, making use of the graphical processing power of those phones, providing real console-quality 3D visuals, running at a higher frame-rate than before.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

The Asterisk development team has released version 1.4.11. This version contains numerous bug fixes. One of these is for a security issue in chan_sip. The issue is that SIP dialog history was being stored in memory regardless if the option for this was turned on or off. This could be abused to cause a system using chan_sip to run out of memory.

The security issue is documented in AST-2007-020. Affected systems include any that are using chan_sip. Also, only Asterisk 1.4 is affected. Asterisk 1.2 is not vulnerable to this issue.

FreePBX announced that FreePBX Version 2.3.0 available for immediate download. After having allowed for an extended Beta program to maximize the testing efforts before final release FreePBX 2.3.0 supposed to be the most stable release ever. During the 9 weeks of the Beta Program the team have had over 3900 active installs estimated at well over 1 Million hours of testing! With the aid of such extensive testing, the developers have closed over 250 bugs that were reported on 2.3 or previous releases. Most of these were existing bugs on FreePBX 2.2 and prior releases making 2.3 the production version of choice.

This is also the first release to support Asterisk 1.4 and. While admitting Asterisk 1.4 still has a ways to go before achieving the stability of version 1.2, it is also advised if you are looking for a solid system that takes full advantage of all FreePBX features, Asterisk 1.2 is your best choice at this time.

Another thing you will immediately notice is the brand spanking new website!

Bug fix only version 1.2.2 of OpenSER has been released to public. This is a minor release in the branch of 1.2 release series, containing only fixes to bugs found since the previous release 1.2.1.The configuration script used with any 1.2.x version is compatible. There was a change in the structure of table "active_watchers" for handling local and remote CSeq numbers -- you have to recreate this table if you are using presence module (instructions are provided here: http://openser.org/dokuwiki/doku.php/install:1.2.1-to-1.2.2).

What to consider in gear, costs, service options, and readiness before you ditch your telco for an Internet line.If you did not know better would think it is an ad by a phone company, wait one of the two monopolies.PC World article.

"Ah, the boring but important department. What is your government doing for you? Passing pork barrel funding for rural telcos and failing to demand better data connectivity from the protected telecom monopolies that they have created... What, you ask, is this 1984?"

Friday, August 24, 2007

I just got my hands on a Blackberry 8820 and mad as hell to read what Blackberry cool has to say. I am not going to write much anf going to link you to the Blackberry Cool site. I got Blackberry for GPS among other cool features."Wow. I must say, this is probably the biggest piece of news we’ve ever broken here at BlackBerry Cool — and possibly the one that’s made us the angriest. We’ve just received word from one of our friends inside AT&T that the US carrier has been successful in their attempts to lockdown the GPS functionality in their upcoming BlackBerry 8820 so that the only functioning 3rd party software will be TeleNav."Any one wants to buy BB 8820?

The great DIY iPhone project that the nimble ones have been waiting has arrived. A group of iPhone enthusiasts have unlocked the iPhone!.The unlock requires physically removing the back of the Iphone, and soldering a wire and a switch onto a single trace on the back of the circuitboard. Bypassing this trace allows access to the boot memory on the phone which is used to send commands down to the flash storage on the device. Those commands allow for the carrier lock to be patched.

As mentioned before, If you're not skilled with a soldering iron or if you are not a nimble handed, you might brick your Iphone and be left with nothing more than a very expensive paperweight. The hack also requires better-than-average software skills (certainly more than clicking "Start" button on windows! ;) - apart from 'jailbreaking' the phone to run third party applications, there's a fair amount of Unix work to be done to the phone, too.

So instead of keeping you here, (I am not unlocking mine, :) here is the link to iPhone unlocked!

Thursday, August 23, 2007

VoiceCon 2007, San Francisco, Calif. – Avaya Inc. (NYSE:AV) widened its lead in worldwide enterprise Internet protocol (IP) telephony revenues, according to Synergy Research Group's 2Q 2007 Enterprise Voice Market Shares Report. With this report, Avaya marks another quarter of leadership in this market, as more businesses around the globe evolve their voice networks to IP telephony. Avaya is a global provider of business communications applications, systems and services.

The report shows Avaya as the #1 vendor in IP telephony revenues (as defined by Synergy), with 25.4 percent of the global market for the second quarter of 2007. In addition, the report shows that Avaya retained its leadership position in the worldwide overall enterprise telephony market in revenue, with nearly 19 percent of the market in 2Q, more than 2 percentage points over its nearest competitor.

"IP Telephony continues to show strong global growth, with the overall market growing 22.5% in revenues year over year," said Jeremy Duke, president and CEO, Synergy Research Group. "Businesses see IP as an essential part of their strategy to operate more efficiently and productively. Our report shows Avaya continuing to extend its leadership position in terms of market share growth."

"Avaya customers are now experiencing the competitive edge that can only be gained through a highly reliable, flexible and open IP Telephony platform," said Stuart Wells, senior vice president and president, Avaya Global Communications Solutions. "Avaya's communications solutions are giving businesses the powerful tools they need to add significant value today, while providing an IP foundation that ensures business success tomorrow."

IP telephony is software-based technology that uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to transmit voice over a data network. IP telephony enables companies to find new levels of productivity through mobility and greater efficiency through cost savings – all of which can lead to improved business results. Embedding IP communications capabilities into business applications can drive new communications models for organizations, and make a significant impact on customer service, revenue generation and business continuity.

Avaya's portfolio of converged solutions includes the industry's leading IP telephony software – Avaya Communication Manager – as well as a host of IP end points within the Avaya one-X family of deskphones, mobile devices and mobile applications.

If you were to casually glance at this, what do you think Villu answered YES to. Yes I thought so too. This is just after explaining that the previous explanation was not correctly heard!"Yesterday, we posted an explanation of what happened to Skype on August 16. Some reactions to the explanation, however, have reminded us of one of the basic tenets of communication: It’s not what you say. It’s what they hear. We’d therefore like to clear a few misunderstandings that emerged in yesterday’s reactions to our explanation of what transpired last week."

Anyway the for the question 4, Villu answered yes to the first part. Had he made it in to two questions, it would have been clearer and I would not have a chance to make fun of the post. (Nothing personal Villu!). I know I am not an English Scholar either when it comes to writing, but then again I am not a spoksperson for a major coporation that users in every continent knows about and use. I write this blog and others because I want to. There is no one demanding or requesting that I do it. I still strive to make it better but I continue to make mistakes, but lesser and lesser.

Skype users could be rest assured that it will continue to operate. Microsoft has responded to repeated inquiries on Monday into its role in the outage, stressing that it had nothing to do with it."In a nutshell, there was nothing different or unusual about this month's patch release," said Christopher Budd, a security programme manager at Microsoft."The issue was a bug in the Skype software and not related to Tuesday's [Microsoft] updates."

Skype uses a peer-to-peer infrastructure that connects users without the interference of a central server, meaning that some users are attributed the role of a 'supernode' that allows the network to function.

Although Skype suffers from a high volume of sign-ons every month, August was struck by what Villu said was a "perfect storm"."Our software's peer-to-peer network management algorithm was not tuned to take into account a combination of high load and supernode rebooting," he explained.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

CMP's Channelweb reports;The head honchos from Microsoft and Cisco spent Monday playing up the collaborative nature of their relationship, particularly as it relates to unified communications, which describes integration of instant messaging, voice, and videoconferencing technologies within a single product.But in a Tuesday keynote at Voicecon Fall 2007 in San Francisco, Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president for Microsoft's Realtime Collaboration Group, dispensed with the niceties and said Microsoft is clearly better positioned in the market.Noting that Gartner had moved Cisco from the 'leaders' to the 'challengers' category in its latest Magic Quadrant for unified communications, Singh took a thinly veiled swipe at Cisco CEO John Chambers, who earlier this year claimed that his company has a three year lead over Microsoft in the unified communications space."Sometimes -- and I wont mention names -- you can have a three year lead in the wrong direction," said Pall, who repeatedly emphasized the superiority of Microsoft's software based approach to unified communications.

If you got a VoIP platform and it is managed with Avaya Communications Manager, or Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unified CallManager and Cisco CallManager. EMC got the thing for you to streamline your services. EMC's Smarts VOIP Performance Manager and Smarts VOIP Performance Reporter would allow companies to monitor, diagnose, and report, as well as provide alerts on all aspects of a system that may affect IP telephony services. This includes information about phone calls, telephone extensions, voice quality, availability of phone service and interconnections to telecoms providers.EMC said that the software would also monitor call volumes, call quality and route patterns to help ensure service levels. Trend reporting and historical performance data is also provided. When it comes to locating troubles in your EMC's software analyses data from multiple sources in order to pinpoint the cause of IP telephony and IT infrastructure problems.

SAN FRANCISCO (BusinessWire EON) August 20, 2007 -- NetQoS® Inc. today launched NetQoS VoIP Monitor to help organizations gauge how well VoIP systems are delivering end-user services and pinpoint the network causes of quality issues. By adding call setup and call quality metrics to its existing VoIP management capabilities within the NetQoS Performance Center, NetQoS now offers the most comprehensive performance monitoring solution for converged networks. NetQoS VoIP Monitor is a network-based VoIP solution that links quality of experience to network performance to speed troubleshooting, without server agents or probes. The product, working with Cisco IP Telephony systems running Cisco Unified CallManager 4.2 or later, provides insight into two of the most important components of VoIP quality: call setup operations (such as time to dial tone and post-dial delay) and audio quality (MOS and underlying network impairments). By tracking actual end user call quality, providing alerts on call performance issues, and isolating the cause of VoIP problems to the network source, NetQoS VoIP Monitor enables organizations to improve performance with faster troubleshooting.

“Monitoring VoIP performance without measuring actual call quality is like cooking without tasting the food. NetQoS VoIP Monitor focuses on the VoIP application itself, enabling IT personnel to understand call quality and connect it to the network impairments that may be causing issues,” said Jim McQuaid, senior product manager for NetQoS. “Combined with the existing VoIP capabilities of the NetQoS Performance Center, which includes end-to-end performance monitoring, traffic analysis, and device performance management with IP SLA reporting, NetQoS now has a powerful solution for ensuring optimal network and application performance before, during, and after VoIP implementation.”

With the addition of NetQoS VoIP Monitor, the NetQoS Performance Center now provides a complete solution for managing an enterprise VoIP system alongside all other business-critical applications by enabling IT professionals to:

Measure response times to show the impact of VoIP on existing applications

Determine the volume of VoIP traffic across the WAN – including who is using it and when – to ensure VoIP traffic is not starving out other business-critical applications

Ability to scale to monitor large numbers of phones for enterprise VoIP deployments.

Available as a single standalone unit or in a distributed configuration (up to ten individual Collectors and a single Management Console unit).

NetQoS VoIP Monitor is packaged in the appliance form factor common to other NetQoS products and deploys in a matter of hours. It is available as a standalone unit or in a distributed configuration. NetQoS VoIP Monitor is available in September at a starting price of $29,500. The NetQoS Performance Center is available to customers at no additional cost with the purchase of one of NetQoS’ product modules.

According to the developers own words, MobileTerminal.app a terminal emulator application for the iPhone. MobileTerminal.app is NOT an SSH client, nor Telnet for that matter. It can however be used to execute a console ssh-client application. Google code MobileTerminalI learned about this at Google Code - Featured Projects: iPhone Mobile TerminalIf you want to get your hand wet on the code and turn it into the best iPhone application, the code is available at;svn checkout http://mobileterminal.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ mobileterminalA short video at utube;

Monday, August 20, 2007

On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption. The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update.

The high number of restarts affected Skype’s network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact.

Normally Skype’s peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, however, this event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly. Regrettably, as a result of this disruption, Skype was unavailable to the majority of its users for approximately two days."

Bu the post also says that the bug that caused the self healing mechanism to fail has been fixed. Perhaps this is the "algorithmic deficiency" that he was talking about.

Hey Microsoft, next time don't let all the users reboot at the same time OK. Hmmm, is this the first time Microsoft updated windows? Nah I still think it is Algorithmic defeciency. But it all has been fixed. So go ahead Microsoft, do updates to your hears content! Skype is ready!

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Villu has posted that everything is fine. Yes heartbeat says everything is good as well. We will know the real meaning of algorithmic deficiency by Monday. Hopefully all those millions users of Skype and begin their usual chatting and file sharing. Here is Villu's post;

"Take a deep breath. Skype is back to normal.On Monday, we’ll provide a more detailed explanation of what happened. Until then, we’d like to apologize and thank you. Precisely in that order.We know how difficult and frustrating the past two days have been. And still, your good wishes kept flowing in. Thank you for the amazing patience, trust and support!"

Friday, August 17, 2007

After taking us through all the drama such as Deficiency in algorithms Villu Arak made me laugh today. I was over at Heartbeat to check how Skype is doing. (Heartbeat shows if all the components are in working order.) The heartbeat shows as in the image that;

Great but as I was reading Villu's post almost spilled the coffee I was drinking on the keyboard."(Update at 1:44 AM GMT: Please ignore the “Problems with Skype login” text in the Heartbeat status box above, next to “Sign-in and registration”, as well as “P2P network core”. The text should read “All working normally”.)"We know you all are working hard to fix the problems. and while at it get the heartbeat fixed as well.

Forget the hype. Forget the scare tactics. It’s time to get real about the potential of municipal broadband and the ways in which cities, counties and other entities can go about implementing successful deployments. This means setting clear goals, creating achievable business plans and learning from the many municipalities that have built networks that are delivering measurable results for their employees and residents.

Silicon Valley is usually our largest conference of the year, and this edition will focus on the practical:

Implementing critical applications such as public safety and automated meter reading

Understanding the impact of next-generation devices, such as the iPhone

Managing the potentials “gotchas” such as mounting rights and contract negotiations

Learning how other municipalities have integrated their wireless networks with fiber infrastructure

Getting the real lowdown advancements in WiMAX, mesh, fiber and all of the technologies that are shaping the present and future of municipal broadband strategies

Hearing about specific new applications that will help municipalities save money and provide valuable services for their communities

This conference will feature a wide range of experts and pioneers who have actually implemented municipal broadband, and have the battle scars to prove it. It will also make sure to look ahead and provide the clear vision of what can – and should – be achieved through the hope and dream of mobile, ubiquitous broadband. This is the event to attend if you believe in the dream and must deal with the reality.

I thought I would pull up this post since many of you may have chosen other avenues to communicate with your friends and buddies. So Skype is not needed any more and you can uninstall it!
Follow this post and it has all the information and links.

It is Friday and Skype is still down but keep coming up in sections. But please let me know what an algorithmic deficiency is? I am suffering from Alcoholic deficiency being this is Friday afternoon and been thirsty for a week! This controls the interaction between me and my friends who drive me home to prevent me from getting a DUI and have nice car for next day to run around! I end up having breakfast for lunch and call it brunch in a nearby restaurant.But the main reason I brought the alcohol up is, once I had it, I too, don't know what I am saying.I found this on the heartbeat blog by skype mentioned in my previous post on Skype outage, The new posts will bring updated information. Hopefully not after a weekend of drinking.But I can't login;) to post a comment asking the question;what is an algorithmic deficiency?

InfoWorld's R. Cringely has a nice post about Teleblend with bunch of comments which as important as the post itself.Most importantly, you get to find out why one VoIP providers name stands for verklempt**

I have several projects in the works for which I should be getting calls. My clients are contacting me by cell and they are very, VERY angry. I could easily lose business.

Worse, TeleBlend tried to pass the buck to its own backbone provider, Global Crossing. That apparently didn't go over too well with Global Crossing, which b*tchslapped them so hard the VoIPers put their tails between their legs and posted a public apology:"

Here’s the latest on the sign-on problem. We’re on the road to recovery. Skype is stabilizing, but this process may continue throughout the day. An encouraging number of users can now use Skype once again. We know we’re not out of the woods yet, but we are in better shape now than we were yesterday.

Finally, we’d like to dispel a couple of theories that we are still hearing. Neither Wednesday’s planned maintenance of our web-based payment services nor any form of attack was related to the current sign-on issues in any way.

VoIP, Inc. (OTCBB: VOIC), a leading provider of turnkey Voice over Internet Protocol communications solutions, announced that the reverse stock split of the Company’s outstanding common stock, at a ratio of 1-for-20 shares, is effective today, August 16, 2007. In addition, the Company’s stock symbol has changed to VOIC and will continue to trade on the OTC Bulletin Board. Under the terms of the split, for every twenty shares of issued and outstanding common stock, a shareholder will receive one share of common stock. No fractional shares will be issued in connection with the reverse stock split; for any fractional ownership, the Company will issue one whole share for any fractional interest.

"As the Company continues to establish itself as the most innovative player in the industry, our reverse stock split lays the foundation whereby a broader base of shareholders can benefit from our technology platform, comprehensive service offerings, and vision to be a leading provider of internet-enabled communications,” said Anthony J. Cataldo, Chairman and CEO of VoIP, Inc. “Traffic over our network continues to increase, with August revenue on track to exceed that of July.”